


Playdate

by PrincessAddieJ



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Addie - Freeform, Sam - Freeform, megan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 13:29:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8287444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessAddieJ/pseuds/PrincessAddieJ
Summary: Addie goes Above to play with Sam, her best friend and the one and only son of Sarah Williams and Bastian Bux. When she starts to feel ill, Sarah fears the sickness does not belong to the human world.





	

The afternoon could not have gone better if she had wished it so. After coming home from school and changing clothes with a quick snap of her fingers, (not wanting to waste even a second), Addie sprinted to her parent’s room as fast as her feet would allow, and begged her mother to take her Above to play with Sam. Of course, Jareth knew exactly where he lived, as his mother – none other than Sarah Williams – had returned to her childhood home as an adult, and made it her own. But neither his queen or the oldest princess trusted the king enough to be civil with the one true champion of his Labyrinth, even for the sake of his daughter’s favorite playmate.

As it were, Sarah was a delight. She was every bit the typical mother, patiently helping both the kids with their homework, giving them space to play when the work was done, and providing plenty of snacks when necessary. Addie and Sam had lapped the house so many times during their game that day, they found themselves rapidly gulping down their weight in water every half hour. The princess had just finished her second large glass in one sitting – something like her sixth or seventh that day – when her head suddenly spun like a top.

“Are you alright, Addie?” Sarah asked, taking the glass from the girl’s shaking hands before she could drop it.

“I think so,” Addie said, grabbing at her head as if to still the spinning from the outside, “I’m just dizzy.”

“You’ve done a lot of running around. Why don’t you come inside and sit down for a short while?”

Addie opened her mouth to agree, and proceeded to get violently sick at Sarah’s feet before collapsing toward the ground.

“Addie!” Sam cried out, watching with anxiety as his mother managed to catch the girl before she could complete her fall. Sarah instinctively cradled Addie close to her, checking for a temperature and running nimble fingers through her wild blonde hair.

“Addie sweetie,” she cooed gently, “wake up. Come now, dear. Wake up.” She rubbed at the princess’s cheeks tenderly, but Addie remained still.

“Mom, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know, honey. Let’s get inside and I’ll see if her parents might know.”

Sarah had shakily managed to get Addie inside and laid down on the living room couch. She instructed Sam to get a cool rag for her forehead while she sat next to the girl and attempted to call Jareth. Though he was the last person she wanted to talk to in this lifetime, Sarah understood what it felt like to have an ill child. She would simply have to talk to him parent-to-parent, rather than their usual bratty-champion-to-snarky-king banter.

If she could actually reach him.

“For God’s sake! Pick up your phone, you pompous glitter ball!” She growled quietly into the phone when it went to voicemail for the fourth time. In her lap, Addie could not help but rasp out a weak laugh. Sarah smiled down at the girl with gleaming teeth, dialing the number yet again.

After three more calls and three more automated voicemail messages, (“I will _not_ have my voice in some mortal technology trap, Megan!”), Sarah left a brief word for the king to get back to Addie as soon as possible. In the meantime, Sarah pulled both kids fully into her lap and held them close. She wouldn’t lie to herself, it was certainly confusing from a human perspective to sit with a child while they dry heaved repeatedly, struggled to stay conscious, and screamed as though their skin was on fire every time a rag of any temperature was held to their skin for too long. And all of this without a fever to speak of. She wondered to herself if it was something she had picked up Underground and what in the world there was to do about it here in the Above.

Several hours later, Addie had thrown up three times in total, with Sarah there rubbing her back and offering her small sips of water to wash the taste away. The princess still felt awful, and by the time Jareth and Megan arrived at the Bux’s front door to pick her up, she was curled into Sarah on the couch, both of them settled under a thick blanket. Sarah had eventually got both of the kids relaxed enough to sit down with a movie in an attempt to keep them calm, but Jareth’s sudden anger quickly put an end to it.

“How _dare_ you poison my daughter?!” The king shouted after one long look at Addie. She had been in his arms nearly the instant he had swept into the room, but Megan quickly took her once he began his screaming.

“What’s going on, baby?” She asked calmly, pressing a soft kiss to Addie’s head.

“My tummy hurts,” the princess whined, tucking her head into the crook of her mother’s neck.

“Iron poisoning!” Jareth bellowed. “It’s clear as day! You poisoned her!”

“Jareth,” Sarah began in a cool tone, “I promise you I haven’t poisoned her. She’s had _nothing_ with iron in it.”

“You lie!”

Sarah did not want to stave off her temper, but she did her best, glancing between both children.

“No, I swear. She and Sammy have been outside almost all afternoon. I gave them some apples and peanut butter earlier, but that’s it. She didn’t even drink any juice because your wife said she can be bad with sugar.”

“Yeah,” Addie piped up from Megan’s arms, “I did good today, Momma. I drank a lot of water.” Megan’s eyes flashed with a thought, one hand coming up to cup the back of her daughter’s head.

“Water? From the tap?” She asked in a low hum.

“Yes, why?” Sarah replied, her thin eyebrows pulling together in confusion. The king and queen shared a quick look of understanding before Jareth inhaled deeply and looked to Sam.

“Take me to your kitchen, boy,” he said solemnly.

Sammy did as he was bid without a thought, leaving his mother behind with Megan and Addie.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Sarah apologized, averting her eyes to the floor and hugging her midsection. Megan offered her a kind smile.

“It’s alright. We have these kinds of accidents at home, too, don’t we honey?” Megan asked of Addie, rubbing the girl’s back with long strokes.

“Mhmm,” she rasped back, her eyes now closed.

“Still, I wish I would have known.”

“Hey, I’m still learning myself. At least when we figure it out you’ll know for next time, right?” At that, Sarah looked back up to see the queen smiling at her with a genuine friendliness she did not expect.

“Next time?”

Before Megan could attest to Sarah’s concern that there would in fact be a next time for Sam and Addie, Jareth had returned. He strode with purpose to Megan’s side and took Addie gently, opening both her eyes and pressing gently against her stomach. When the princess let out a long groan in response, Jareth nodded at his queen with understanding.

“It is as I thought. Iron poisoning. The pipes are made of it.”

“Oh my god!” Sarah gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. “I am so sorry!”

“You had no way of knowing,” Jareth said quietly, looking as though it pained him to say the words. “But we do need to get her home to see my Healer.”

“Yes of course,” Sarah breathed, walking back to the door with them. “If there is anything I can do . . .” She wasn’t sure where the words were going, and let them die on her tongue before the sentence was finished. She was a human who had made the mess in the first place, how in the world did she expect to clean it up?

“We will keep you informed,” the king told her simply, turning away and walking out the door, not bothering to open it with his hands, but rather, with magic.

Hesitantly, Megan reached out to hug Sarah gently, whispering:

“Thank you for taking care of her.”

She let go after a short moment, following Jareth out the door. As she met his side he waved a hand with purpose, and the three of them were gone before Sarah could blink.


End file.
